Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hpfcdc!hpislx!hplvli!boyne
From: boyne@hplvli.HP.COM (Art Boyne)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: High- vs. low-level languages (Was: Re: Why unix doesn't catch on)
Message-ID: <360017@hplvli.HP.COM>
Date: 24 May 89 15:20:22 GMT
References: <664@tukki.jyu.fi>
Organization: Loveland Inst. Div
Lines: 19

shapiro@rb-dc1.UUCP (Mike Shapiro) writes:

>Ah, but it was fun for us doing all sorts of strange things on (the CDC) 
>machine.  For example, at Purdue on educational leave from Bell
>Telephone Labs, I did much of the first port of SNOBOL4, from the IBM
>360 to the CDC 6500.  SNOBOL4 was written entirely in a "portable"
>assembly language.  To implement it, I had to write many macros and
>runtime routines.  (For credit, R. Stockton Gaines did some of the
>initial work.)  [Reference: my chapter in Ralph Griswold's book on the
>macro implementation of SNOBOL4.]

Ah, yes.  I remember it well from my Purdue days.  Only recently did I
finally throw away a source listing of that SNOBOL4 port, and I think
I still have it on a 7-track CDC tape.

If anyone wants to see a rather different language, look at SNOBOL4.
It was part of one-semester class at Purdue, along with ALGOL-60.

Art Boyne, boyne@hplvla.hp.com